Just a reminder: If you enjoy Rarely Likable's linkbuckets, you should also watch the delicious page. I have strong suspicions that 2009 will bring more entries there than they will under this header.
A literary community that really looks like it's worth checking out. (via Perpetual Folly, which has also been selecting the best New Yorker stories of 2008. Start here, if you haven't read any of it yet.)
Another interesting new place to read about writing. (via lots!)
Blake Butler's year of submitting longer work to small presses, which links to Shane Jones' piece about same.
I've spent a hell of a lot of time in the last few months mulling over policies for you know what, and therefore Scott Garson's take on such matters was of particular interest.
Tayari Jones provides more helpful pointers before breakfast than most people will in a lifetime. This time around? Short fiction contests.
The Columbia MFA funding thing. I am really glad that discussion of issues like this has come so far in the last few years.
Matt lets it slip that Michael Kimball's life-on-a-postcard series will be used as contributor notes for the next issue of Keyhole. I was already set to stalk my mailbox...sheesh...
Are video games anything like novels? Looking at what I played in 2008 alone? Bioshock. Several Final Fantasy games. Fallout 3. The most recent WoW expansion. The World Ends With You. Guild Wars. Video games were instrumental in getting me back to writing fiction, when I'd quit a few years ago. Mini-resolution for this year: Writing something about that experience.
Printing this out for the bulletin board...except that defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
And finally: Five worst Dalek cakes.
Thanks for that link re: Columbia's MFA program. I'm a graduate, so "ask an alum"? Best courses I've ever taken, incredible program, I do agree. I just wish Ben Marcus had been in charge when I was there and consumed with the funding situation then... it's because of the lack of full funding (+ high cost of living in nyc) that Columbia and their generous student loan officers may well have been the worst decision of my life.
Posted by: nova | January 02, 2009 at 07:41 AM
I've talked with more MFA graduates in the last couple of years than I did in the ten previous. I'm thoroughly convinced there's a season's worth of talk show in Things That MFA Students Didn't Feel Like They Could Talk About Until After They're Out.
I always envision Tyra Banks as the host, but that's just my demented imagination at work...
Posted by: Erin | January 02, 2009 at 11:01 AM
Ha! What a show that would be.
Posted by: nova | January 04, 2009 at 07:12 AM